


Shine On, Harvest Moon

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 20s au, And background Ashe, Drabble, F/M, I guess technically background Annette, she does sing a song though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Felix didn't think much of the bar's location, or its whiskey options, or its clientele, especially when its clientele were his two best friends with a too much time on their hands and a conspiracy theory they wouldn't let go of. He didn't think much of the evening in general.He thought quite a lot of the new singer they'd pushed onto the stage last minute, however.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 17
Kudos: 51





	Shine On, Harvest Moon

Felix was the first to arrive, as usual. He was a particularly punctual man, but more important than that, Sylvain was a particularly careless man.

Still, Felix would’ve much preferred it if Sylvain had decided to change his habits, just this once, given that he chose the time, and the location, and indeed that the entire meeting was his idea in the first place. And what a time and location for a meeting it was. When Felix arrived at the proper intersections of streets and turned down the alleyway, his heart sank to see no sign of his friend. It was not the sort of intersection where people would look kindly on loiterers, especially if they smelled like money, which Felix regrettably did – he had expected a classier establishment that evening, and had matched his suit to the ostensible occasion. Even with a knife at his fingertips and a glare on his face, Felix didn’t fancy hanging around and waiting for his friend to show up.

Luckily, looking like you came from money had its upsides as well as its drawbacks, and when Felix knocked on the lone unmarked door at the end of the alleyway and grumbled in a low, impatient bark that he was looking for a drink, the door magically opened for him and he was only set back a few bills on his way in. Sylvain, he lied to himself, would make up for lost funds.

The whiskey tasted more like cigar smoke than liquor, which Felix imagined was not on purpose. He found a seat at a back table, so dimly lit he wasn’t even sure that section of the bar was supposed to be open. There were only a handful of other patrons at the bar that evening, mostly a desperate sort, or a sort who were going to soon be a desperate sort, and Felix didn’t care to mingle with any of them, tonight or ever. He was halfway through his second pour when he spotted Sylvain and Ingrid slipping through the same back door. He didn’t have to move for their eyes to find his; they were well-practiced in these kinds of meetings.

If Felix was out of place in this area of town, Sylvain looked as if he was between trips from dropping off one millionaire’s daughter and picking up the next’s. There was a strong likelihood he was, although Felix couldn't see what so many starlets and heiresses saw in Sylvain’s unkempt hair and unbuttoned collar. He tried to slide his arm around Ingrid as they made their way to the back corner, drinks in hand, and she elbowed him in the ribcage, hard. Her father would be beside himself to see his only daughter in a suit; but that was the least of her offenses these days, and frankly, Felix was pretty sure she didn’t care either way.

“Any reason you chose the worst bar in Fhirdiad for this little meeting?” Felix asked before his friends could even sit down.

“Aw, come on, I like this place,” Sylvain said, although the face he made as he took his first sip of his old fashioned contradicted his claim. “I can’t believe I’ve never invited you here.”

“It’s because the singer’s a knockout,” Ingrid said, cutting Sylvain’s soothing words off with crisp, annoyed syllables. “He’s been badgering her for a date for weeks, now.”

“Not a  _ date _ , just a drink,” Sylvain said, as if that made a difference. “And it’s not just about sex appeal, you know, Ingrid, although I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. You’ll like her, Felix, I heard she was an understudy for  _ Madame Butterfly _ last season.”

Felix frowned more deeply to hide his curiosity. He’d gone to Madame Butterfly five times and Sylvain knew it. It didn’t make his bourbon taste any less like ash. “If she was in the opera, what’s she doing  _ here _ ?” he asked, and cursed himself for getting distracted. He really hadn’t planned on having more than one drink this evening; three was absolutely off the table.

Sylvain shrugged. “Hard times hit us all, my friend. What are any of us doing here? What are  _ you _ doing here?”

“Good question,” Felix muttered. “I was hoping  _ you _ would have the answer for that.” The glare he gave Sylvain this time was less annoyed, and more significant, than any he’d leveraged this evening.

Sylvain sobered up to see it. He leaned over the table and passed a packet of papers to Felix, his eyes flickering to the edges of the bar as he did so, although no one was watching them that evening. “I’ve been doing some digging about rumors at this church to the south,” he said softly, urgently. “Vigilante justice. Cops can’t find a suspect. Cops can’t find a motive. Cops can’t find a  _ weapon _ and are being pretty damn tight-lipped about the cause of death.”

Felix looked at the papers, an odd assortment of newspaper clippings and hastily copied police reports. “So you ruin my evening to tell me you’ve heard some disconnected rumors about a ghost,” he said sharply, barely reading the papers in front of him.

“Not a ghost, Felix, we’ve been over this before,” Ingrid snapped, leaning forward a little too quickly. She never could handle her alcohol, even in small doses. “There was no coroner’s report. There was no body. This is just one pin on a map, but there’s a pattern here, you’ve got to admit this time that –”

A lackluster smattering of applause cut Ingrid off, and Felix glanced over his shoulder to see a petite young woman in a dress too long and too low for her take the makeshift stage with her silver-haired pianist. Even from a distance, Felix was surprised that this was the type of woman Sylvain was chasing after these days – there was something deeply sincere about the way she held herself, and Sylvain disdained sincerity, even if it came along with fiery red curls and a plunging neckline.

Felix’s confusion was quickly solved by a disappointed sigh from Sylvain. He turned back to see his friend visibly slump in his chair.

“She must’ve gotten her job back at the opera company,” Sylvain said sadly. “And I would’ve bought her any drink she wanted, too.” He sat up a bit straighter, leaning forward. “Hey Ingrid, wasn’t that the  _ waitress _ the last time we were h –”

He was cut off by a glare from Ingrid as the song begun – she held steadfastly to decorum, even in the lowest of circumstances, and Felix rolled his eyes, bracing himself for at least another 30 minutes before he could slip back out into the streets and find himself something better to do with his evening.

She wasn't an opera singer, Felix could tell that much. She launched into a version of “Shine On, Harvest Moon” that was pitched a little too low for her, and the introduction was tremulous. There was something tentative in her voice, and Felix believed that she’d been dragged away from bringing drinks around and shoved onto the stage at the last minute. But as she launched into the chorus, listing the months of the year with a lilt in her voice that Felix was fairly sure wasn’t in the original score, the was a playfulness that overtook the song, as if she was laughing at the moon, or the lyrics, or the bar. As if she was laughing at the whole absurd situation that brought her there. Felix turned in his chair and instantly regretted it, as the singer’s eyes tracked the motion and they made brief, unmistakable eye contact.

And he felt, suddenly, that she was laughing at him, too.

Felix broke eye contact as quickly as possible, and didn’t turn in his seat for the rest of her four-song set. She got more confident, and to Felix’s ears, more amused, as the set went on. The applause that followed her offstage was just as lackluster as the applause that had welcomed her onstage, and although Felix didn’t join in Ingrid’s enthusiastic encouragement, he scowled at the rest of the bar for their lack of taste. He also allowed himself one look at the stage as she hurried away, her curls bouncing as she turned to give the bar a final, unprofessional, adorable wave. He couldn’t quite see into the wings but Felix had a suspicion that she fell into her pianist as she rushed offstage, although he seemed to catch her with a practiced ease.

“Well, sorry you didn’t get your opera performance, buddy,” Sylvain said, sounding sadder for himself than for Felix. “But if you stay and hear me out, I promise I can be through these files in under 20 minutes – I think she does her sets on the hour, so we’ve got about thirty minutes before Miss Decorum over here makes us sit through another rendition of Let’s Misbehave.

“I’m getting another drink,” said Felix, pushing back from the table. He looked back at the shocked look on his friends’ faces – they’d rarely managed to get him to stay past their opening pitch. In his defense, their opening pitches were uniformly stupid. “If I’m going to listen to you, I’m going to drink,” he snapped, and walked away before they could follow up.

If he nursed the drink slowly, and he could drink slowly if he wanted to, he could reasonably stay for another thirty minutes.

And after that, it would be rude to leave in the middle of a performance.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like everyone I know says they have a 20s AU elaborately mapped in their mind and then they never publish it. This is a callout post. Send me all your Netteflix 20s AUs. I would like to see them.
> 
> This didn't have a plot! I make no apologies; I hate plot. I might add onto it and do like a series of vignettes or something, I dunno. I just think Mercedes looks like Daisy Buchanan but is way less terrible and we should run with that.
> 
> [ Twitter link! Sorry it's like 45% Animal Crossing these days. ](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


End file.
